Douglas
McPherson
meets one of the new breed of Nashville session cat who returns to the
UK this month.

Pat
Buchanan
has played guitar on records by Tim McGraw, Faith Hill, The Dixie
Chicks,
Travis Tritt, Mary Chapin Carpenter… the list of top recording artists
goes on. But it took a meeting with Paul McCartney to make this
likeable
session cat go all starstruck.

“I
came over
(to the UK) with Kevin Montgomery and the rhythm section from The
Mavericks”,
gushes the dedicated anglophile and curry fiend. “Kevin’s
father
(Bob Montgomery) wrote songs and grew up with Buddy Holly, and Paul
McCartney
has Buddy’s publishing, so we got to go to the Buddy Holly party and I
played Not Fade Away for Sir Paul.

“It
was wild.
I looked up from the first solo and I got eye contact and thumbs in the
air. I read his lips and he was like, ‘Right on!’.
Afterwards,
he was congratulating everyone in the band. I was kinda last to
walk
up. He grabbed me by the cheeks and said, ‘You, mate, are a
f***ing
genius!’”

Pat
shakes his
head at the memory. “It’s always great when you meet one of your
idols but that’s pretty much top of the list. Seeing The
Beatles
on the Ed Sullivan show was the reason I became a musician.”

Not
listening
to Hank Williams, Buck Owens or George Jones, you’ll note.
Times are changing in Nashville and Buchanan is a fully paid-up member
of the New Order. If you’re looking for the source of the pop
influence
in modern country music, you only have to look at the CVs of people
like
Pat.

Back
in 1986
you might have seen Pat on Top Of The Pops when his band of the time,
Cameo,
was at #13 in the UK charts with Word Up. After Cameo,
Buchanan
toured the world playing guitar with pop acts Hall & Oates and
Cyndi
Lauper before eventually putting his roots down in
Nashville.
And while he spends his days putting licks on country records, Buchanan
is also a major player on Nashville’s power pop scene. He
has
played on albums by Marshall Crenshaw and Swan Dive (whom he describes
as “equal parts Beatles and Burt Bacharach”) and it was during a UK
tour
with his own Beatles-influenced guitar band Idle Jets and CMP caught up
with him.

Some
would suggest
that people like Buchanan and fellow Idle Jet Greg Morrow – who had to
miss the tour to play on a Billy Gilman session – don’t leave their pop
sensibilities at the door when they turn up to play on a country
record.
Buchanan offers no argument.

“Some
of the
old formulas are just not holding up anymore. So it’s the
new
guys who really learned outside the box, if you will, the guys who can
play anything, who are the new guard. Country music
sometimes
seems a bit behind the times. I’ve been in Nashville about six
years
and I feel I moved there at the right time because it’s coming along to
where a guy like me with a kind of rock and funk and r’n’b background
can
play on that stuff.”

Of
today’s Nashville
session scene and its connection to the town’s growing pop community,
Pat
observes, “It’s kinda wild because a lot of people have moved there
from
LA. The best musicians gravitate to the place where you can
make the most money and be paid well for your craft. SO some of
the
best musicians are in Nashville. But the level of musicianship on
any given record you play might not be anywhere near the potential of
the
musicians playing on it. Consequently, you go out almost any
night
of the week and hear great musicians playing in clubs and stuff.”

It’s
not just
the money that attracts musicians like Pat to Music City,
however.
It’s also the opportunity to interact with other players in a studio
environment.

“It’s
perhaps
one of the last places where musicians are all playing together.
A lot of pop records are made in layers. Drum machine,
bass,
guitars, one at a time. A typical Nashville session is kinda
wacky.
A lot of people show up and play together, sometimes as many as six or
seven. There are a lot of sessions where people will get
going
and really feed off each other. The human element of that
is
what really makes great records that stand the test of time.”

Pat
also enjoys
the community spirit that characterises the Nashville music scene.

“One
of the
first times I went to Nashville I went to look up a bass player friend
and Rodney Crowell was there. Rodney gave me a guitar and said.
‘Play
this. This songs got three chords.’ So I sat
in.
I think that really sums it up. I don’t think there’s anywhere
else
like it.”

Given
the small
number of musicians that crop up on so many Nashville albums, you’d be
forgiven for wondering how they find time to indulge in outside
projects.
Pat offers a laugh of agreement.

“When
I first
got to Nashville it posed the question: how often did God intend
me to use this gift? There are three three-hour sessions a
day. The joke goes: you play from ten till one, then you
eat.
You play from two till five, then you eat. You play from
six
till nine, then you drink! But one hand washes the
other.
Coming over here (to the UK) and being able to chill with my band helps
me to go back and do the sessions. And there’s so much work
in Nashville. I can take a break and know it’s not going
anywhere!”

Originally
from
north Florida – what he called “Tom Petty, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Allman
Brothers
land” – Buchanan grew up in a musical family. His mother is
a jazz singer. His dad played bass in a jazz band, and it was a
shortage
of good jazz drummer and guitarists that led Buchanan Sr to buy the
infant
Pat and his brother Christmas presents of a guitar and a snare
drum.

“I
guess I was
a musician right out of the box. Music was very much spoken in my
house.”

Making
his first
public appearance in front of his school assembly, the Tallahassie
laddie
progressed to bar band work before joining the already signed
Cameo.
His invitation into the somewhat closed shop of Nashville session work
came from producer Ed Seay who is known for his work with such artists
as Pam Tillis, Collin Raye, David Ball and Sherrie Austin.

“I
was very
lucky. I was playing in a band in Panama City,
Florida.
Ed came up to me in about 1980, gave me his card and said, ‘You’re a
great
player. If you’re ever in Nashville, look me up.’
‘Course,
I did, and I couldn’t get past the secretary on the front desk for
about
two years. But once I did he was true to his
word.
I talked to Ed when I was embarking on my touring career. I
talked
to him about once a year and he’d say ‘You’re gonna move up here one
day.’
Finally, one day, he said, ‘You’re gonna move up here now! The
time
is now, before the line gets too long.’ So I went up
and I sat in on, I think it was Pam Tillis’s second album.
Suddenly
everybody knew my name because Ed Seay had such a great E F Hutton
factor.
He opened some doors for me.”

How
do the session
cats get on with the stars?

“Everybody’s
pretty cool. There are people who just sing their song
while
the musicians get their tracks down, who seem a bit
detached.
But then there’s people like The Dixie Chicks who are totally into
calling
all the shots. They’ll play on the go down. We’ll all
hang out and tell jokes and just get loud together. They’re like
rock chicks. They’ve been on the road forever and they know
how to have fun – and they know if that gets into the music it’s gonna
make it better. They’re band people, just like we are.”

Many
of Nashville’s
singers, of course, are these days coming from a similar pop background
to the new wave of pickers.

“I
worked with
Mary Chapin Carpenter on her song Almost Home, and I found her to be
very
astute pop-wise. I was playing this riff and she went ‘Yeah, I
like
that Pretenders lick.’ And I went ‘oh-oh, she’s onto
me!’
Then we started talking about XTC, which is one of my favourite bands,
and she knew all about them. We kinda had this cool
wavelength.
We were talking about records that inspired us, and that inspired my
performance
on what I was doing on that day.”

With
so many
pop influences on the format, is there still a cutoff point where
Nashville
producers will say ‘Keep it country’? Buchanan frowns with
distaste at the idea.

“I
think the
older formulas are kinda dying away. So if you try to keep the
giant
emergency brake on, it just sounds muzzled and held back. Because
really it is. There’s been so much music where people have been
performing
below their potential. I don’t to that. It’s a strange kind
of fear thing. People are afraid of country radio not playing
their
record. But, sooner or later, that’s all gonna die
away.
There are some producers who just hire the guys that do that more
conservative
thing, but I just don’t play that way.”

The
only modern
trend that Buchanan dislikes is the one towards kiddie country.
We
share a joke about an artist they call The Singing Sperm. Which
brings
us neatly to the times top pickers have to work with mundane singers
and
below par songs.

“That’s
probably
the hardest occupational hazard. There’s a lot of Zen work
required.
You just try to make it as good as it can be. You might suggest
different
arrangements or changes to help them be better if it’s within your
jurisdiction.
If not, you must hang out with your fellow musicians who know the deal,
and you just get through it.”

Inexperienced
songwriters can also be a pain.

“All
the musicians
have been making records for 20 years. But you do demos for
songwriters
and they think they know how to make records! At the risk
of
sounding egotistical, you kinda teach them right there on the
job.
‘Well, you could try it this way…’ Yeah, there’s a lot of
Zen
work required!”

It’s
at times
like those that Pat can comfort himself by looking forward to a guitar
thrash with the Idle Jets. On the whole, though, Buchanan is one
happy session cat.

“It’s
a great
gig to be an eternal teenager and get paid for playing with your
friends.
You can’t beat that.”